


Is Anybody Out There? (i'm alone and i've forgotten how to get home)

by secretfeanorian



Series: the worst things in life come free to us [16]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Homesickness, aside from that it's just Maglor, hints of sea longing, random people - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-24
Updated: 2014-08-24
Packaged: 2018-02-14 12:55:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2192607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/secretfeanorian/pseuds/secretfeanorian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a song on his lips that he's afraid to let out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Is Anybody Out There? (i'm alone and i've forgotten how to get home)

_Heaven today is but a way to a place I once called home. Heart of a child, one final sigh as another love grows cold. Once my heart beat to the rhythm of the falling snow, blackened below. The river now flows – a stream on molten virgin snow. [For the heart I’ll never have, for the child forever gone. The music flows because it longs for the heart I once had.] Living today without a way to understand the weight of the world. Faded and torn, old and forlorn; my weak and hoping heart. [For the child, for the night, for the heart I once had. I believe and foresee everything I could ever be.]  
_

* * *

It’s not like Maglor isn’t used to being alone. He’s been alone for the greater part of his life. That doesn’t make being alone any easier to bear, but it does make it bearable. And yet…Maglor finds himself more often than not beginning to collapse under the crushing loneliness that has enveloped him ever since he fled New York.  
  
As the days pass by, he finds himself almost…homesick. Homesickness is a feeling that Maglor is far too accustomed to, but he’d forgotten the mind-numbing pain of an only just lost home. The dull ache of missing a home he can barely remember now and a home that he has had time to mourn the loss of has nothing on the pain of so recently losing a home he’d managed to make for himself the ashes of emptiness.  
  
He’d begun to forget the homesickness over the years he’d spent with the Avengers and now that he’s lost the home he’d spent those years in, the longing has come back with a far stronger bite than ever before. Somedays, the only thing he can think about is the aching homesickness. Other days – most days – he attempts to (and mostly succeeds at) not thinking about it, but it’s a little hard to avoid any and all mentions of the Avengers without also avoiding civilization altogether and Maglor just isn’t ready to do that anymore.  
  
Over the past few years, he’s grown used to the sense of not being alone that civilization has to offer and he’s just not ready to once again jump headfirst into the utterly-aloneness that leaving civilization entirely promises. He finds it funny, though, that so many years of being alone and liking it can be replaced by a few, brief years of not being alone and even when those brief years are over, them leaving enough of a mark on him that he can no longer roam for decades all on his own and not be bothered by the fact.  
  
(It’s actually not at all funny, but Maglor’s found that terrible things hurt a bit less if you laugh at them.)  
  
He’s dreading the solitary existence that awaits him and so he delays re-entering it. He makes excuses to himself. He diverts his train of thought from going in that direction. But underneath all of the stalling and the bluster, he knows that it’s only a matter of time before he is recognized. Somewhere inside of him, something suggests that maybe it’s time he stopped running. That voice, however, is quickly squashed, though Maglor isn’t sure what by.  
  
He doesn’t think too long about it. He doesn’t claim that he’s not running, because he is. He has been running for a very long time and maybe it is time he stopped, but it is also true that he is immortal and the rest of the inhabitants of Middle-earth (excluding Daeron) are mortal. He doesn’t belong in the mortal world and he should have realized that from the start. Loneliness had gotten the better of him, though, and he had stayed when he should’ve run and never looked back. After enough time had passed, he would’ve had to deal with the problem of being immortal. Mortals don’t tend to trust – or even allow to continue to existing – things that they don’t understand. This flaw holds true for mortals of an even slightly different background than theirs and Maglor is just about entirely sure that when the world had learned of his immortality, they really would not have taken it well. Maybe they would’ve taken it well (or well _ish_ ), but Maglor looks at the past (and even at the present), does the math and he really doesn’t like the odds that he comes up with. Despite all the reasons to completely disconnect himself from the mortal world for the next few centuries, Maglor still finds reasons to delay.  
  
Eventually, he admits to himself that he misses the Avengers. Over the past few months, since his fleeing New York, he had ignored the news and any current events, especially any concerning or related to the Avengers, but today he slips unnoticed into a small shop that has a television playing in the back.  
  
Luckily for him, the channel is set to one that is currently broadcasting news related to the Avengers. Unluckily for him, the news anchor is currently talking about him and he cringes when he reads the headliner. “Avengers still refuse to make any comments relating to their ex-teammate since his confessional outburst several months ago.” He almost turns and leaves the shop right then, but he stops when he hears the anchor say, “The only thing Captain Rogers has had to say to the press about Macalaurë’s dark past is that Macalaurë is not innocent of the charges against him, but that he has also paid the due price of those crimes a hundred times over. What the hell is that supposed to mean? The man admitted to murdering hundreds of innocent people on live, national television. Hundreds of civilians. That doesn’t sound like something a good guy would do.”  
  
The conversation on screen continues on in this manner for several minutes before Maglor gets up to leave. As the door closes behind him, someone onscreen finishes saying “And they have yet to explain exactly how this guy has lived for millions of years and still looks like he’s in his 30’s.”  
  
Maglor walks down the street, deep in thought. He swerves his path abruptly to avoid crashing into a group of people walking in the other direction. He thinks he can feel their eyes on him even after he’s gone past them and so he pulls his hood further over his head nervously. He meanders his way down to the beach and for a while, just stands and watches the ocean.  
  
The waves lap at his feet and with every wave that comes crashing in from the depths, the water around his feet grows a little deeper. When the water has reached halfway up his calves, he begins to walk. He doesn’t go farther into the head-waves and he doesn’t turn and leave the water. He walks along the length of the beach, humming – and then singing – quietly to himself.  
  
The call of the sea is less strong today – perhaps weaker in the absence of the fog – and so Maglor can walk along the beach without feeling a burning pull on his very being. It’s nice.  
  
There are a dozen or so boats farther out in the ocean that are visible from the beach. One of them seems to almost shimmer on the water and when Maglor blinks, it has vanished. He pauses in his walk and then stops singing and continues walking. He doesn’t think he’s seeing things, but he also doesn’t think the boat had actually been there.  
  
He comes across a large pool of water that has gathered away from the ocean during low tide and from high tide receding to low and he stops and watches the pool be slowly enveloped by the now once-again rising tide.  
  
After an hour or so of standing in one place, he turns and keeps walking along the beach. There aren’t a whole lot of people out on the beach, even though it is an exceptionally clear day, but Maglor doesn’t stop to wonder why that might be. He simply continues to meander along the shoreline with a song on his lips that never leaves them.


End file.
